할힌골 전투에 대한 남․북한 역사 인식 비교

Comparison of South and North Korea's Historical Perceptions on the Battle of Khalkhin Gol

This study compared the historical perceptions of South and North Korea on the Battle Khalkhin Gol that took place in the border area of Mongolia and Manchuria in May 1939. North Korea regards the Battle of Khalkhin Gol as a great achievement of Kim Il-sung's anti-Japanese movement in Manchuria and treats it as a historically important event. With the ‘August Factionalist Incident(종파사건)’ in 1958 as an opportunity, North Korean history academia paid attention to the Battle of Khalkhin Gol while extensively promoting Kim Il-sung’s anti-Japanese activities in Manchuria in order to establish a ‘revolutionary tradition’. In the early 1930s, Kim Il-sung organized a Korean army under the command of the Chinese Communist Party and waged an anti-Japanese struggle in Manchuria in the Chinese border area. However, in 1939, when the Battle of Khalkhin Gol took place, Koreans fighting against Japan were chased by the Japanese army due to the Repression Operation against Koreans. Eventually, in 1940, Kim Il-sung lost his base of activity and had to cross the border to the Soviet Union to escape Japanese surveillance. Unlike the North Korean history academia, the Battle of Khalkhin Gol was not much noticed in South Korea. Recently, as the story of Koreans who participated in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol was introduced in Korea, public interest in it was gathered, but no academic study was conducted on it. However, in this study, through domestic and foreign data, it was possible to confirm the case of Koreans participating in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol as part of the Japanese army, which provides a new clue to clarify the problem of the Military Mobilization of Korean which is facing difficulties in data. First, even before the implementation of the conscription system in 1944, Koreans were conscripted and mobilized in the Japanese military. Second, in the late 1930s, a many Koreans participated in the battle against the Soviet Union as civilian employees. Third, Koreans who graduated from the Japanese Military Academy belonged to the Japanese army and participated in the battle against the Soviet Union.